Just ahead of Tesla’s home battery announcement April 30, Greentech Media’s Stephen Lacey reported on concerns that the move toward solar smart homes may be getting ahead of itself.
The compelling vision for home energy is that “by combining rooftop PV with learning thermostats, web-connected appliances, energy monitoring software, and battery storage, homeowners will soon have unprecedented control over their energy use,” Lacey wrote on The Energy Collective earlier this week.
“But is the market ready for it? That’s what many in the solar industry are asking as top companies look to expand beyond the rooftop and get deeper into the home.”
The questions were driven in part by a recent U.S. survey by Clean Edge and SolarCity, in which 50% of respondents identified solar as the most important technology for their country’s future. But “only 6% said they’d consider buying a PV system within the year,” Lacey writes, “while 12% said they’d buy a smart thermostat.”
